International Symposium "What IS Narratology?" - Narratology Research Group, University of Hamburg
Abstracts of papers to be held at the symposium "What is Narratology?"
Anja Cornils, Wilhelm Schernus, Jörg Schönert:
From Theory of the Novel to Narratology
Works on the history of the discipline often refer to the period up to about the mid-1960s as Narratology's pre-structralist phase'. Furthermore, it is argued that this phase (and an even longer time span in the German speaking countries) was dominated by the theory of the novel or rather, questions stemming from this field. A 'theory of narrative' in a more general sense is seen to have come into being only after structuralism as well as interdisciplinary and international approaches in literary studies had been successfully established; theory of the novel had hence received less attention and been replaced by Narratology as the focus of attention. One consequence of this close binding of narratology to structuralism is that older and non-structuralist approaches have received little if any attention, or been degraded to the status of mere 'precursors'.
Our contribution deals with the complex relation between theory of the novel and narratology (narrative theory). (1) With regard to historical and systematic aspects we will particularly investigare approaches and concepts emanating from questions of the theory of novel, but ultimately transcending its scope and formulating general theses on the question of narrative. (2) Taking the various fields of interest within the theory of the novel as a point of departure we want to analyse which of these domains have been delegated to narratology and which new areas of research were opened up by narratological approaches.
Gregory Currie:
Kinds of Narrative and the Meeting of Minds
n/a
Jens Eder:
On the relation between narratology and theory of reception
Narration presupposes communication, communication reception, reception cognition. It appears as if a direct line leads us from questions of narratological concern to a variant of reception theory oriented towards cognitive sciences, thereby allowing us to base, specify, ground empirically, or at the very least complement the hermeneutical, phenomenological or semiotic fundaments of narratology. This is why reception and cognition oriented methods of analysis have been common in the theory of film narration since the 1980s.
Our question is not whether concepts taken from cognitive science can be put to use in narrative theory - this has already been proven - but rather, what kind of role they are supposed to play in the context of the formation of narratological theories, which chances and risks they offer and hold. This is a complex question which on the one hand is of concern to the design of theories and the setting of goals in narratology and narrative theory, and on the other hand bears relevance on their own basing in theories of meaning and communication. My contribution tries to investigate the relation between narratology and a cognitivist reception theory by outlining the connex between various research problems in the relevant disciplines.
Andreas Kablitz:
What constitues an 'event'?
n/a
Tom Kindt, Hans-Harald Müller:
Narrative theory and/or/as a theory of interpretation?
Scholars of literature normally answer the question as to what narratology actually is or should be by pointing to the subject field of 'narrative' texts which in turn is defined by a normative concept of 'narrativity'. One hardly ever takes note of the fact that this answer is neither self evident, nor the only one possible. One problem hardly ever mentioned and least of all systematically analysed yet of great importance to the definition of narratology is this: the question of narrative theory's relation to other, possibly similar or adjoining areas of formation of philological theory.
Our contribution will investigate this problem by studying the exemplary case of the connection between narratology and the theory of interpretation. (By theories of interpretation we understand theories in literary studies dealing with the assigning of meaning to texts.) We want to sketch out an explication of narratological terms specific to their contexts. Step one will present some typical characterisations concerning the relation between the narratological and the interpretative explanation of texts taken from research discussions and describe their goals and variants. Against this backdrop we will then sketch out a suggestion for a delimitation of narratology vis a vis theory of interpretation which may serve as the basis for a cooperation among both.
Matías Martínez/Michael Scheffel:
Theory of narrative and theory of fiction - two approaches, one subject matter?
Narratological studies by scholars of literature normally do not deal with the phenomenon of narration as such, but rather with narration in texts which in a common sense are seen to qualify as literary texts'. Theoretical implications and practical consequences of this delimitation to a subset within the wide field of narration are hardly ever problematized. This situation is unsatisfactory and leads to distortions in perspective. Must the subject-matter of narratology therefore be extended to include all forms of narration, as Gérald Genette and others have demanded? And if so, would this not lead to narratology's foresaking of the field of interest specific to literary studies? What are the preconditions for practising narratology as a fundamental discipline within literary studies? These are the questions we intend to discuss in our short contribution which will also sketch out the possibilities for narratology as a genuine undertaking within literary studies against the backdrop of a combination of theory of narration and theory of fiction.
Jan Christoph Meister:
Bedingungen der Möglichkeit of narrative: a case for narratological fundamentalism
Current reviews of evolving trends in contemporary narratology tend to postulate a three-phase development of the discipline. In this perspective, phase one brought the development of an analytical practice rooted in Formalism into theory oriented and 'hard' (i.e., linguistic and semiotic) Structuralism purporting to realize an ideal 'science of narrative'. Phase two was triggered by the advent of Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction and put the entire paradigm into question, focussing in large parts on a critique of structural narratology's igno-rance for the historical and psychological forces at play both in the production, and the reception of narratives. Finally, the current phase three is characterized by a two-fold 'softening' of the discipline. Its first manifestation is the willingness of narratologists to forego methodological rigour and integrate new theoretical paradigms such as, cognitive science or constructivism into their models. The second aspect is that of an apparent re-definition of narratology's role within the Humanities: instead of presenting itself as the cove-ted semiological master discipline narratology's raison d'etre is now being derived from its ability to demonstrate applicability. This vision of an imminent pragmatic re-orientation is aptly captured in one of the key metaphors of contemporary debate, namely that of the 'narratological toolkit' which one wishes to put to practice in the context of overarching historically, sociologically or hermeneutically oriented research problems. In a nutshell, phase three-Narratology is being conceptualized as less self-centered and more willing to experience the liberating sensation of a transitory 'towardness' ascribed to it by an ever-growing list of contemporary publications.
It is at this point that I would like to throw a spanner into the works of programmatic libe-ralism and argue against our discipline's premature treatment with methodological fabric softeners such as Gender or Cultural Studies. Rather than scrambling to demonstrate the use-fulness of our 'toolkit' we should systematically revisit the most basic definitions and con-cepts of Narratology and make sure that our drill bits are indeed sharp enough. More precise-ly, I want to suggest to conceive of Narratology as an investigation into the Bedingungen der Möglichkeit of phenomena associated with narratives. The phenomena entities and struc-tures such as character, story, perspective and the likes - are firstly diverse, secondly they become thematic under different methodological aspects and interests (production, reception, tradition, normative context etc.). Though guided by the one Leitfrage, our revision of key concepts must therefore take account of this potential variance by presenting in the first instance coherent base definitions before venturing into potential adaptions for purposes of application. What this fundamentalist credo boils down to in practice will be sketched out with reference to one of such key concepts, namely that of the event.
Ansgar Nünning:
Narratology or Narratologies? Taking Stock of Recent Developments, Critique and Modest Proposals for Future Usages of the Term
The point of departure of the paper is the fact that the term narratology is currently used in (at least) two quite different senses. Rimmon-Kenan, for instance, defines 'narratology' in a very narrow sense as "that branch of narrative theory that developed in the sixties and early seventies, mainly in France, largely under the aegis of structuralism and its formalist progenitor", whereas Herman uses the term "quite broadly, in a way that makes it more or less interchangeable with narrative studies", referring to both structuralist narrartology and the host of new narratologies, which he calls 'postclassical'.
The paper pursues three goals: to give an overview of recent developments in narratology, to highlight the differences that distinguish the 'new narratologies' from the structuralist paradigm within which 'narratology proper' operated, and to provide both a critique of the inflationary use of the term 'narratology' and some modest proposals for its future usage.
John Pier:
On the Semiotic Parameters of Narrative
Classical narratology postulated for narrative a story level and a discourse level, drawing on and synthesizing various existent or newly-devised dichotomies: fibula/sjuet, story/plot, raconté/racontant, histoire/discours. While this schema proved indisputably to be a major step forward both in the delimitation of the formal features of narrative and in the practice of narrative analysis, it is nevertheless flawed by a tendency to superimpose concepts that are not based on wholly convergent criteria. It is this situation, in part, that contributed to the crisis of narratology, particularly once research sought to reach beyond the confines of textual immanence and to incorporate narrative communication, on the one hand, and the semantic dimension of narrative, on the other.
Various attempts have been undertaken over the years to resolve these issues, both by narratologists and by researchers who have sought to integrate narratological concepts into concerns of another nature, one of the most notable examples being Paul Ricur's hermeneutic theory, where these concepts occupy a mediate position within the three "mimeses." The argument of this paper, however, is to show how, within the structuralist story/discourse dichotomy, there lies a latent ternary categorization, largely overlooked by the poststructuralists, but representing a powerful undercurrent in narratological models that should be taken more openly into account: narrative contents, narrative signifiers and their configurations, the dynamics of narrative deployment or, in semiotic terms, semantics, syntactics, pragmatics. From this perspective, it then becomes necessary to look at narrativity as a form of semiosis, the textual equivalent of which is intertextuality. Intertextuality thus plays a crucial role in narrative, and indeed is absent from no form of expression, so that it may be more or less highlighted from one work, author, movement or period to another, just as it may be manifested locally or globally. And finally, an intertextual approach forms a useful if not indispensable means of determining the relations between the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic features of narrative.
Gerald Prince:
Surveying Narratology
If narratology has experienced undeniable triumphs and reached enviable results, it undoubtedly has also encountered a number of significant obstacles that it has not quite managed to overcome: proliferating terminology, unconstrained claims, ambiguous objectives, and so on. These are, at least in part, due to the difficulty narratology has had in circumscribing its domain, a difficulty which itself is partly related to the hesitations that have riddled the very definition of narratology's object, i. e., narrative: is the latter a semiotic or semantic entity (in Benveniste's sense of the terms)? is it specifically dependent on formal, topical, or substantial features? is it necessarily part of some intentional process? and so forth. One more attempt will be made to define the domain of narratology by surveying some of the questions that its object as well as its self-proclaimed goals have evoked, by attempting to make these questions more explicit, and by sketching at least some of their answers.
Wolf Schmid
What does being narrative' mean?
Two different concepts of narrativity can be found: 1. According to the classical one texts are deemed to be narrative' when a medium of communication - a narrator' - exists within the represented world (Friedemann, Stanzel). 2. The structuralist definition does not focus on a characteristic of the process of communication' or mediation', but on one of the narrated as such: the existence of a temporal structure or a story' (Danto, Genette, Pronce, van Dijk). The classical notion includes descriptive texts and excludes mimetic ones (drama, film). The structuralist notion includes mimetic texts and excludes the descriptive ones. In our dealings with texts both concepts prove to be either insufficient in terms of distinctiveness and discriminatory function, or anti-intuitive'. Thus the practice of literary analysis has for a long time already turned out to apply a mixed concept which my contribution intends to discuss and systematize. In this regard I will not answer the initial question in the sense of a strict defininition of something being narrative'; my presentation rather wants to present a suggestion as to how to use the expression: What can sensibly be talked about as falling under the category of being narrative' ?"
In the wider sense I will suggest to label such texts as narrative which represent the transformation of the initial situation of a represented instance. (Transformation implies a temporal structure of at least two moments, as well as an equivalence [that is, similarity and contrast] between initial and final situation. Representation of a transformation presupposes the selection, labeling and evaluation of constituents of an occurence and implies perspective"). We will exclude the sub-set of descriptive' texts which represent only one moment in time and one situation, or in which the occuring transformations are functionally subordered under the representation of a situation. The latter of course is a question of interpretation, but without this mental reservation it would not make sense to differentiate between narrative' and descriptive' texts.
The narrower definition of narrative shall apply to texts which represent the transformation of an initial situation of a represented instance and, at the same time, explicitly or implicitly also represent an instance (narrator') responsible for the representation of that transformation. As a result we can then exclude the subset of mimetic texts' from the set of narrative texts' in the wider sense, in other words: we can exclude texts which represent the transformation without mediation' by a narrator': drama, film, comic, narrative ballet, pantomime, narrative painting etc..
Narratological analysis cannot be content with the mere registering of narrativity. The smallest narrative can already present a great number of transformations, not to mention novels such as War and Peace". For this reason I furthermore introduce the notion of event. In general terms it will be suggested that eventiveness increases by the measure of deviance of the transformations against the doxa or script and the measure of relevance which a transformation has in terms of the axiology immanent to the text. There are further criteria for the measure of eventiveness for which a set shall be presented.
The contribution will also respond to some of the criticism voiced in the internal discussion of the Narratology Research Group (FGN) (ref.www.NarrPort.uni-hamburg.de, Forum Narratologie">"Narratologie:Konzeptionen").
Michael Titzmann
On the systematic position of Narratology within Literary Theory / Literary Studies
The fact that we group a certain set of theories under "narrative theory" or "narratology" cannot be considered self-evident; it is rather the result of specific processes in the history of science. One of the aims of the project conducted by the research group at Hamburg University is to evaluate the historical merits of this set of theories. Against this background and at the risk of sounding trivial this contribution will attempt to give a more precise definition of the position which these (partial) theories occupy within the system of Literary or Textual Studies respectively.
While classical" narrative theory conceived of itself as a theory of the genre of narrative prose texts, which indeed it was to a large extent, the later structuralist-semiotic approaches transcended the boundaries of genres and media from the very beginning. If we differentiate this set of theories into those relating to the level of "discourse", that is, to the modes of presentation of a narrated story , and those dealing with "histoire", meaning theories relating to the narrated story itself, then we can at least arrive at the following preliminary definitions.
All theories of the "narrative situation" are merely special instances of a general theory of possible "speech situations", therefore completely neutral as far genres and media are concerned, and relevant irrespective of whether a text (in the widest sense: every coherent semiotic utterance) posseses a "narrative structure" or not.
All theories dealing with the relational positioning and/or structuring of the narrative situation vis-a-vis the narrated story are also parts of a preceeding general theory of texts.
All theories that reconstruct what constitutes a "narrative structure" (= the level of histoire) are cutting across genre and media boundaries and differentiate the total set of texts into two classes "narrative" vs. "non-narrative".
By combining the characteristics that differentiate the more recent narratological theories the traditional distinctions between media and genres (e.g., drama, ballade, narrative text etc.) can be reconstructed.
The descriptive categories offered by narratology therefore turn out to be far more relevant and constitutive towards a general theory of text/literature than one would imagine considering its traditional labeling under "narrative theory".
Copyright: FGN / Version 23.04.2002
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